Homage

Leed Character gazed at the brightly burning star and lowered his eyes to the horizon, the point where the star would eventually take him.

Not knowing whether to carry a sword, a six-shooter or a particle beam weapon (set on stun), Leed Character decided to simply walk softly and carry a big stick.

Shouldering his goatskin water bag and sheepskin food pouch, which were all his gear, he tightened the leather belt around his stone washed denims. He followed the path laid clearly before his deerskin clad feet – a broken yellow line down the center of the asphalt thoroughfare.

After a piece, Leed Character came upon a man sitting on a boulder off to the left of the road, a dark green cloak wrapped tightly about him. Leed could see no face.

“Hail and well met!” said the hooded figure, extending his hand palm outward.

“Good eve, good sir,” said Leed.

“Could you spare a crust for a starving man?”

“Of course, kind sir. Let us both make meal,” said Leed.

After bread and honey, cheese, and dried apples, Leed said, “Oft are chance meetings the best, but my path is laid clearly before me and my way is lit.”

“Yes, you must go, but I shall accompany thee, by your leave, for my way lies along yours for a while.”

“Yes,” said Leed, “two travel lighter than one alone. But if we are to travel together, what is it that I shall call you?”

“My name,” said the man, “is R.P. Dunlovie!”

There is a time, there is a place, where sanity and insanity merge to create a new transient state where the illogical is truth and logic becomes irrelevant. Mysteries abound and knowledge is the key to death. The eye beholds that which was never meant to be seen and the ear hearkens to sounds that have no tie to reality.

The house of cards upon which civilization is built was collapsing and people were going berserk.

Chronology itself had been upset . . .

There was a time when people starved as they suckled the teats of motherboards, the electronic pacifiers of their age; and Greed ate people from the inside out and took the name of Cancer; and rats grew fat off the byproducts of man, the filth and creeping poison that rotted all else on the planet; where daylight oozed down on mutated squirrels bickering with oily pigeons for the few scraps left by the rat packs.

Society had given up the search for nirvana, which in the original Sanskrit meant 'a blowing out'.

Leed Character and R.P. Dunlovie followed a star that shone bright in the heavens. It was close to dawn. Leed knew the night was getting old. The creatures of darkness felt this more keenly, and with a last surge, light cracked the sky, and silence, as a curtain, fell. The silence was golden, as golden as the beak of the dove who alighted on Leed's shoulder and tweeted in his ear, “In you I live.”

Leed Character and R.P. Dunlovie broke fast. After a spell, they paused to defecate behind some bushes, although this was just taken for granted, and not usually mentioned in stories such as these. Leed asked R.P. Dunlovie of this, and R.P. Dunlovie replied, “It has long been my opinion that much of the world's grief is caused by the constipation of rich old men.”

As they walked, Leed Character, elated by the morning, feeling attuned and profound, struck up conversation. “Is life not a fiction? Are we not all authors of our own stories?”

"Perhaps, but always remember the Great Editor, who has the final word,” said R.P. Dunlovie.

R.P. Dunlovie told Leed Character that there were doers and there were thinkers.

“Can one be both?” asked Leed.

"Few have done so," said R.P. Dunlovie who smiled sadly as they walked.

The sun climbed high in the sky, the sun perfect, the sky perfect, and in that moment, Leed Character envisioned a vast expanse of stars beyond the sun and a multitude of alter-expanses beyond this, and as the galaxies rushed past, the constellations waltzing madly, he beheld a light in a darkness that were neither light nor darkness. He saw a void, and the heart of the void beyond all, and his vision snapped a brief moment before his mind would have.

“Look!” cried R.P. Dunlovie, and looking Leed saw a great bird circle and wheel overhead. “That albatross is an illusion, yet see how he flies? He cares naught of your illusions. We all have the power to create illusions. Some have the greater power.”

Later, with the mysteries of the universe swirling in his mind, Leed dropped off to sleep thinking of a dark sea-bird swooping down in the moonlight.

The albatross, black as the space between stars, crashed earthward, red eyes flashing above an obsidian beak, iron talons positioned to rend. Leed, white as the skin of a virgin in the moonlight, spread his arms wide . . .

. . . He awoke with a start, his heart pumping, his eyes and mind straining to grasp. Calming, Leed drew a deep breath and looked about their small camp beneath the trees. All was quiet except for R.P. Dunlovie who had removed his cloak and tunic, and labored at some unseen project. R.P. Dunlovie was facing away and the moonlight fell square on his bent back. Leed could see discolorations, like fading welts, thirty-nine of them, crisscrossing R.P. Dunlovie's back.

“What by air, earth, fire, and water are you doing?” asked Leed.

“Building a ship, my elemental friend,” said R.P. Dunlovie. “Tomorrow I sail!”

They were up early the next morning and on their way before the cock crowed thrice. R.P. Dunlovie dragged his boat, which was no more than a crude raft behind him.

“Isn't that a great burden?” asked Leed.

"Whatcha gonna do," shrugged R.P. Dunlovie.

They continued in silence for a long while. R.P. Dunlovie stumbled. Leed thought of offering him a drink of water. He discarded the idea.

They came to a steep hill and without looking up, R.P. Dunlovie struggled onward. Just as Leed thought that R.P. Dunlovie could do no more, they reached the summit of the mount, and looking out, Leed saw a vast ocean spread across the horizon. R.P. Dunlovie stood erect, the breeze refreshing him. He looked taller. Their eyes met, and Leed understood. He looked back out over the ocean and a tear ran down his cheek, salty as the mist.

There was no sermon.

Without looking back, R.P. Dunlovie proceeded down the hill, hauling his raft. Leed followed. Upon reaching the shore, R.P. Dunlovie laid down his craft at the edge of the water. “Hail and well met I said at our meeting and hail and well met I say at our parting,” said R.P. Dunlovie.

“I love you,” said Leed, and he said no more.

“Have Faith!” cried R.P. Dunlovie.

They embraced and looking hard at each other, R.P. Dunlovie turned and cast his vessel out onto the water. He stood aboard the casually tied pieces of wood as though it were the deck of a great warship. As the tide carried him away, it appeared as if R.P. Dunlovie walked on the water.

Long after the raft was out of sight, Leed Character stared across the ocean. Dusk grew, drenching all in a fine misty melancholy; romantic reveries rippled with the waves. As the orange and violet melted into the bluish-green, a star shone clear in the evening sky.

Slowly Leed raised his face heavenward . . .

His eyes were clear and sharp.